The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, by Tobias Smollett

Chapter Two

A Superficial View of Our Hero’s Infancy.

Having thus bespoken the indulgence of our guests, let us now produce the particulars of our
entertainment, and speedily conduct our adventurer through the stage of infancy, which seldom teems with interesting
incidents.

As the occupations of his mother would not conveniently permit her to suckle this her firstborn at her own breast,
and those happy ages were now no more, in which the charge of nursing a child might be left to the next goat or
she-wolf, she resolved to improve upon the ordinances of nature, and foster him with a juice much more energetic than
the milk of goat, wolf, or woman; this was no other than that delicious nectar, which, as we have already hinted, she
so cordially distributed from a small cask that hung before her, depending from her shoulders by a leathern zone. Thus
determined, ere he was yet twelve days old, she enclosed him in a canvas knapsack, which being adjusted to her neck,
fell down upon her back, and balanced the cargo that rested on her bosom.

There are not wanting those who affirm, that, while her double charge was carried about in this situation, her keg
was furnished with a long and slender flexible tube, which, when the child began to be clamorous, she conveyed into his
mouth, and straight he stilled himself with sucking; but this we consider as an extravagant assertion of those who mix
the marvellous in all their narrations, because we cannot conceive how the tender organs of an infant could digest such
a fiery beverage, which never fails to discompose the constitutions of the most hardy and robust. We therefore conclude
that the use of this potation was more restrained, and that it was with simple element diluted into a composition
adapted to his taste and years. Be this as it will, he certainly was indulged in the use of it to such a degree as
would have effectually obstructed his future fortune, had not he been happily cloyed with the repetition of the same
fare, for which he conceived the utmost detestation and abhorrence, rejecting it with loathing and disgust, like those
choice spirits, who, having been crammed with religion in their childhood, renounce it in their youth, among other
absurd prejudices of education.

While he was thus dangled in a state of suspension, a German trooper was transiently smit with the charms of his
mother, who listened to his honourable addresses, and once more received the silken bonds of matrimony; the ceremony
having been performed as usual at the drum-head. The lady had no sooner taken possession of her new name, than she
bestowed it upon her son, who was thenceforward distinguished by the appellation of Ferdinand de Fadom; nor was the
husband offended at this presumption in his wife, which he not only considered as a proof of her affection and esteem,
but also as a compliment, by which he might in time acquire the credit of being the real father of such a hopeful
child.

Notwithstanding this new engagement with a foreigner, our hero’s mother still exercised the virtues of her calling
among the English troops, so much was she biassed by that laudable partiality, which, as Horace observes, the natale
solum generally inspires. Indeed this inclination was enforced by another reason, that did not fail to influence her
conduct in this particular; all her knowledge of the High Dutch language consisted in some words of traffic absolutely
necessary for the practice of hex vocation, together with sundry oaths and terms of reproach, that kept her customers
in awe; so that, except among her own countrymen, she could not indulge that propensity to conversation, for which she
had been remarkable from her earliest years. Nor did this instance of her affection fail of turning to her account in
the sequel. She was promoted to the office of cook to a regimental mess of officers; and, before the peace of Utrecht,
was actually in possession of a suttling-tent, pitched for the accommodation of the gentlemen in the army.

Meanwhile, Ferdinand improved apace in the accomplishments of infancy; his beauty was conspicuous, and his vigour so
uncommon, that he was with justice likened unto Hercules in the cradle. The friends of his father-in-law dandled him on
their knees, while he played with their whiskers, and, before he was thirteen months old, taught him to suck brandy
impregnated with gunpowder, through the touch-hole of a pistol. At the same time, he was caressed by divers serjeants
of the British army, who severally and in secret contemplated his qualifications with a father’s pride, excited by the
artful declaration with which the mother had flattered each apart.

Soon as the war was (for her unhappily) concluded, she, as in duty bound, followed her husband into Bohemia; and his
regiment being sent into garrison at Prague, she opened a cabaret in that city, which was frequented by a good many
guests of the Scotch and Irish nations, who were devoted to the exercise of arms in the service of the Emperor. It was
by this communication that the English tongue became vernacular to young Ferdinand, who, without such opportunity,
would have been a stranger to the language of his forefathers, in spite of all his mother’s loquacity and elocution;
though it must be owned, for the credit of her maternal care, that she let slip no occasion of making it familiar to
his ear and conception; for, even at those intervals in which she could find no person to carry on the altercation, she
used to hold forth in earnest soliloquies upon the subject of her own situation, giving vent to many opprobrious
invectives against her husband’s country, between which and Old England she drew many odious comparisons; and prayed,
without ceasing, that Europe might speedily be involved in a general war, so as that she might have some chance of
re-enjoying the pleasures and emoluments of a Flanders campaign.